Amazon extends moratorium on police use of facial recognition software

Amazon.com Inc said on Tuesday it is extending until further notice a moratorium it imposed last year on police use of its facial recognition software.

The company had halted the practice for one year starting in June 2020. Its announcement came at the height of protests across the United States against police brutality toward people of colour, sparked by the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, during an arrest in Minnesota.

Civil liberties advocates have long warned that inaccurate face matches by law enforcement could lead to unjust arrests, as well as to a loss of privacy and chilled freedom of expression.

Amazon’s extension, which Reuters was first to report, underscores how facial recognition remains a sensitive issue for big companies.